Since our last DWP oral questions, I have updated the House on the expansion of our youth employment offer, I have been to an excellent job fair in Glasgow, I have said that the latest unemployment figures show a fall, and last week I went back to university—it was the McDonald’s Hamburger University. My Big Mac was not perfect, but I welcome McDonald’s as the latest employer to support our youth guarantee. My right hon. Friend the Minister for Social Security and Disability has said that the “right to try” regulations have come into force and, as we have mentioned, we also have the changes on statutory sick pay, which significantly expand coverage and make it available from the first day of employment.
I worked at McDonald’s throughout my GCSEs and A-levels and while at university—it is a good employer for those who are studying. Newbury Soup Kitchen is a local charity that is supporting a constituent of mine, spending many hours on the phone to universal credit staff. However, they do not consistently accept the authority to discuss, demanded an in-person meeting despite the resident being wheelchair dependent, and offered a Teams meeting only for the resident to find out that Berkshire does not offer Teams meetings. Will a Minister meet me to discuss the case and the process failures?
T2. The Cities of London and Westminster has more jobs in it than people—certainly many more than there are young people. For too long, though, some of the young people in the very centre of London have not had the chances they should. I welcome the Government’s youth guarantee. Will the Secretary of State tell me how it will work with institutions such as Westminster city council, the Corporation of London, Zacchaeus 2000 and the Abbey Centre to really deliver on that promise?
My hon. Friend is right that we need everyone—not just central Government—to be involved. I would like local authorities, businesses—all of us—to see the youth opportunity challenge as a national endeavour worthy of all our support. I am happy to work with her local authority to try to make it as successful as possible.
“We cannot defend Britain with an ever-expanding welfare budget”.
That is the view of the author of the Government’s strategic defence review, the Labour peer, former Labour Defence Secretary and former Secretary-General of NATO Lord Robertson. Which will the Secretary of State choose: defending the country or paying people not to work?
The Conservative party failed to reform welfare and failed to back our defence forces—it left the armed forces at their smallest size since Napoleonic times—and it says that there is a choice. The truth is, the Conservatives did neither of those things; we are doing both. We are increasing defence spending to 2.5% of GDP—something they never achieved, despite inheriting that level from us when they took office—and we are reforming welfare by putting work and opportunity at the heart of everything we do.
Let us put some facts on the table, because it is time for the Government to confront the hard choices. We are spending less than 2.5% of GDP on defence, but 5.3% of GDP on welfare. Six million people of working age are living on benefits. Under the Secretary of State’s Government, over a million more people have gone on to universal credit and hundreds of thousands have gone on to sickness benefits—and the Government are choosing to spend even more by scrapping the two-child cap. We cannot go on like this. When will he and the current Prime Minister come forward with a plan to bring the welfare bill down? Or is it like with Sir Olly Robbins: another topic where his judgment and the Prime Minister’s differ?
The shadow Secretary of State said that she wanted some facts, so let me give her some facts. The Tories inherited spending on defence at 2.5% of GDP; they left office with it lower. They left the Army at its smallest in two centuries, and they cut the number of frigates and destroyers by 25%. It is the Labour Government who are increasing expenditure on defence. It is the Labour Government who are reforming welfare, including the changes in universal credit this month, and the youth employment initiatives that we have talked about throughout these questions.
T4. The shadow Secretary of State has recently claimed that the Government could save getting on for £2 billion from the welfare bill by bringing in face-to-face assessments. I find this ironic because the Conservatives were the ones who reduced face-to-face assessments to almost zero when they were in government. Can my right hon. Friend therefore set out what steps he is taking to clear up the mess that they left behind?
I thank my hon. Friend for a very good question. Here is another fact the shadow Secretary of State may not welcome: the truth is that before the pandemic, face-to-face interviews were the norm and after that, the numbers collapsed. Not only that, the previous Government signed off a new set of long-term contracts allowing most of the assessors to work from home, just a year before the general election. We are now increasing face-to-face interviews to provide a proper balance in the functional assessment process in the benefit system.
The Department for Work and Pensions is currently reviewing over 200,000 cases of overpayments for carers, some of whom have accrued up to £20,000 through a situation not of their own making. In the light of this, will the Secretary of State stop applying carers penalties until the Department has completed this review?
As the hon. Gentleman has rightly said, we have now started reviewing those 200,000 cases. We anticipate that there will probably be 25,000 people among the 200,000 who could have debts cancelled, or could possibly be refunded. If carer’s allowance has been overpaid and should not have been, we will of course need to recover the money. The problem has been that the previous Government’s guidance in the Department was wrong. We have now corrected that, so I am hopeful that that particular kind of mistake will not occur again.
T3. At the previous DWP oral questions, I raised concerns that youth unemployment in my constituency was up 15% since the last election, and I received something of a dismissive response. Two months later, there has now been an astonishing 28% increase in young people out of work, so will the Secretary of State finally concede that his Government’s policies are the cause?
The policies that I am advocating are creating opportunity for young people, through offering employers hiring incentives, through promoting youth apprenticeship starts and through the other initiatives that we have set out. We do this because we agree that work is the best answer for young people, and I want to do everything I can to make sure that they have the maximum chance to get work.
T5. In Mansfield, our youth hub is already bringing together Jobcentre Plus and local partners to support young people into employment. Can the Secretary of State set out how the Government are strengthening youth hubs around the country to ensure that every young person has access to high quality, personalised support?
Youth hubs are another part of the effort, and the advantage is that we can get the help that the jobcentre can give to where young people are in the community. This also means we can get help to people who are not necessarily signing on for benefits but who are looking for work, and it enables us to give a more flexible response across different services. We hope to expand these hubs to more than 360 locations, where they will be open to all 16 to 24-year-olds, whether or not they are on benefits.